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Walter is an Eastern Cape poet, from Port Elizabeth, but he has spent a lot of time in the Alice region when working at the University of Fort Hare. His writing is often centred on the Eastern Cape landscape and peoples, against which he looks at both society and self.
Walter has published three books of poetry (Tracks and Baakens were published by the historic Lovedale Press in Alice, and Mousebirds, Seaberg, Port Elizabeth), and has co-authored Groundwork, a textbook on poetry, with Felicity Wood.
He is the winner of the following awards for poetry: 1999 - Thomas Pringle Award for poetry published in journals; 2000 - The Ingrid Jonker Prize for Tracks, published 1999; 2000 - Premier’s Arts and Culture Awards - Eastern Cape, for literature; 2005 l Award for Outstanding Literature – National Department of Arts and Culture.
He has collaborated with both artists and other poets, working regularly with an informal group ECCA, which was originally formed with colleagues from Fort Hare, and included the late Basil Somhlahlo, Cathal Lagan and Norman Morrissey. Quentin Hogge is currently the fourth member.
With Hillary Graham and poet Cathal Lagan he worked on the Caversham project, a poetry and print project which resulted in a number of lithographic and screen print images that brought poetry and image together, under the eye of master printer Malcom Christian, at Caversham Press, near Howick in Kwa-Zulu Natal.
With Elaine Matthews Walter worked on the Xoe! site specific project in Nieu Bethesda.
He runs writing workshops, and has taught creative writing both at Fort Hare and at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University. He edited the first four editions of Tyume, the Fort Hare Journal of Creative Writing.
Currently he is interested in publishing poets from the Eastern Cape, and has started a small venture called Seaberg. Seaberg has produced its first two titles, St Mark’s Diary, by Norman Morrissey, and A Lark in the Labyrinth, by.
Other work
1988: M.A. by research: "Meaning in the Mode: Pastoral in Selected Works of Spenser and Shakespeare". Supervisor of Professor E.P. Bryant (University of Port Elizabeth). 2001: PhD by research: ““Plaatje’s African Romance: the Translation of Tragedy in Mhudi and Other Writings”. Supervisor: Professor Malvern van Wyk Smith (Rhodes University).
1992 Interview with Mbulelo Mzamane (South African writer and academic, then in exile) forms a chapter of Out of Exile, interviews with returned South African writers, edited by Kevin Goddard and Charles Wessels, NELM, Grahamstown, 1992. 1993 "The Romance of Protest: Sol Plaatje's Mhudi" in Literature, Nature and the Land: Ethics and Aesthetics of the Environment, Collected AUETSA Papers, Edited N. Bell and Meg Cowper-Lewis, Dept of English, University of Zululand, 1993. Paper read at AUETSA Conference in Zululand, July, 1992. 1994 Foreword to Basil Somhlahlo's A Whistle from the South, a collection of poems, published by Lovedale Press, Alice, 1994.
Numerous poems published in Poetry in Anthologies and Journals
Editorship
Editor, Tyume, Fort Hare Journal of Creative Writing, Published by the Department of English Studies and Comparative Literature, University of Fort Hare, 1996-2000, Nos. 1 to 4.
Conference Presentations
1992 "The Romance of Protest: Sol Plaatje's Mhudi". Paper read at AUETSA Conference in Zululand, July, 1992. 1995 “‘Youth grows pale’ and The Beautyful Ones are Not Yet Born: the tension between the ideal and the material in Keats and Armah”. Paper read at the Keats Bicentenary Conference, UNISA, Pretoria, September, 1995.
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